-Laurell K. Hamilton

Skill Innovation! New Skill learned!

Build Level 1 - Create a fully-formed building, building feature, or building module from available materials. Blueprints may be used to form structures from a specific template. Any building created with this skill will require approximately an equal time to build as it would without this skill; this time can be shortened by having additional casters. Mana Cost: Variable, dependent on building created and resources used.

"Fucking… you kidding me? About goddamn time!"

"Maybe if you'd bothered to read a book instead of spending a couple hours whacking at your wood, you'd have accomplished something without needing to be carried!"

John wheezed as he dropped the hammer he'd formed from some of his remaining bars, abandoning the attempt to secure the wall frame he'd Crafted to the wooden flooring he'd started off with. He was almost a full hour past the time he planned to return, but he'd been frustrated at every step of the way by his complete ignorance of how to actually build a house that wouldn't fall over in a stiff breeze.

"I asked - once - if there was a way to re-Craft something, and you called me a 'shitbird'. I did not give you permission to stay out here again!"

"I'm here as long as you need help! And you need a lot of help!"

John growled in frustration. Seras had departed not long after John had started, probably because he hadn't had anything to help with back then, and John was quite glad she wasn't around to see his frustrations and failures. The floor had been easy enough - John made it in sections, since his Craft skill apparently had limits to the size of object it could make. He ended up with four five-by-five sections to make - he'd hoped - a ten-foot-by-ten-foot room, but getting them together was the easy part. All he had to do was craft a hammer and some nails out of his ores (although he had no idea if bronze was a suitable material for building, but they seemed sturdy enough to get in) and hammer them together. He had no idea how many to use, but the floor sections went together after he hammered in a ring of wooden 2x4s he also Crafted around the outside. It looked like shit, but it worked, and he'd made them so that there wasn't much else to do unless he wanted to nail them on top of each other.

After that he'd gotten to work doing the walls, which had turned out as just a layer of boards like the floor, which meant that although he could put it perpendicular and nail it in place… it fell over with less than half of his full weight placed on it, damaging the wood and breaking the screws. After that he'd figured out a rough wooden frame with supporting beams, having seen his father redo the insulation of the house once, and crafted that in sections. He was almost certain that it wouldn't hold up a roof, but he never got the chance. He finally got a new skill that would take care of it for him.

"Thank god, I did not want to add carpentry to my list of study subjects. Chemistry, Algebra, Interdimensional Barriers, and Carpentry would make for a hell of a semester, though."

John smiled at his own internal humor, giving the wall section he'd been working on a firm kick. The few nails he'd managed to secure weren't enough to hold it; they pried free with a great creaking noise, and the entire thing fell over.

"Fuck manual labor," John decided firmly, shaking his head and tossing the hammer down. He'd have to come back to this project later - for now he was almost certain that he was going to have to destroy everything he had just made in order to recover the resources, since he doubted already-formed floor and wall pieces counted as "resources".

"Yeah, who needs exercise?! Not you, right?!"

John made the trek back in record time, his fatigue outweighed by his annoyance and anger at having wasted so much time to create such a mess of a foundation. Well, plus Natty. John's habit of speaking out loud was going to get wiped out quick if the little stain on humanity continued to have something to add to every word from his mouth.

As for the house situation, though, Natty wasn't entirely wrong. Really, it was his own fault since he was more or less trying to sprint before he could even crawl. John had never even taken a shop class, much less learned the actual intricacies of building a functional structure. His only meaningful accomplishment had been to secure the four pieces together, and that was something he'd learned to do around age eight with legos…

"Someday," John thought determinedly as he came upon the bare campsite, "I won't be walking into a couple of flattened out patches of greenery that qualify as beds or wading through foot-high grasses to get here. It's going to be a home. And I'll start first thing after whatever tests Moira has in mind tomorrow."

"Master, you're back! Is it time to leave?" Seras asked excitedly. She was laying on the grass, looking decidedly bored. He couldn't blame her - next time they took a shopping trip, he'd be sure to get her and the others something to actually… do here. He probably couldn't just Craft books with enjoyable stories.

"Past time, actually. We'll see you all tomorrow - and I'll bring you some more food," John added as an afterthought. Maera waved goodbye, smiling sadly as John's World Shift carried them across time and space.

They appeared in John's bedroom, exactly where they had left. John was halfway to speaking when a pop-up interrupted him.

A skill has leveled up!
World Shift - Level 3: Cooldown is now 4 hours. Can take up to 10 people at a time between worlds.

"Huh. Neat. About time, too," John noted. "Anyway, Seras, stay quiet for a minute; I'm gonna go see if anyone's here yet."

John quietly crept down the stairs, but there were no sounds and no signs of life in any of the rooms that he checked. When he finally made his way to the front door, the driveway was still empty, and not a single thing had moved inside the house.

"She hasn't been home… how long is she going to stay gone for? She's never left a whole weekend before," John muttered. A bit worried but more curious than anything, John reached for his phone and made the call.

"Hello John!"

His mother's beaming voice and musical tones made John's anxiety fade immediately but only added to his curiosity.

"Mom? Where are you?"

"I wondered when you were going to call. Well, while I was out having a nice drive, I thought it'd be a good idea for you to have the house to yourself for the weekend, so I really did go to visit Aunt Gillia! I know with you going to the Academy you don't really get a lot of time away from your parents, so it's all yours until tomorrow afternoon!"

"You… you drove to Florida… on a whim?"

"Well, you know, just seemed like a good idea. So have fun, clean up any messes you make, and be sure to wash the sheets!"

"Oh Gaia, Mom, I-"

"Gaia? I'm not going to lie to you, sweetie, in my day the curses we used were a lot more vulgar-sounding. But way to be progressive! Anyway, Gillia's got the jello shots ready, so I can't keep her waiting too long. Love you, have a great weekend, you know where we keep the condoms!"

John might've thought he was crazy, but he swore he heard a conga beat going in the background just before his mother hung up the phone. Aunt Gillia's beachside home was always fun as a kid, but…

"Nope, not gonna think about anything that she said, did, or that I heard. I'm gonna eat dinner, go to bed, and get a head start on repressing these memories." John did just that, fixing a quick plate for himself before returning to his room. As he shut the door behind himself, he quirked an eyebrow at the empty room, before he noticed his closet door slowly peeking open.

"M-master?"

"Seras, you can come out, there's no one here," John said, rolling his eyes a little.

"S-sorry, you were gone for a little while," Seras said sheepishly, hiding her hands behind her back in embarrassment as she kicked the closet door closed behind her.

"It's fine, let's eat some dinner and relax," John smiled as he spoke, grabbing the sandwich he'd thrown together from what was in the refrigerator and beginning to absently munch. "So I was thinking tomorrow we take it nice and easy. I'm gonna go back to the mall, pick up a few things - I'll do it alone this time. And after that, we'll just do some quick dungeon grind- ow, fuck!"

-2 HP!

John covered his mouth with one hand out of reflex, and when the pain subsided a little, it came away bloody. A small trickle of warmth fell down his mouth as he reflexively swallowed the last bit of food he'd been chewing.

"M-master, you're bleeding," Seras pointed out, unhelpfully gesturing to the redness.

"I know, I know, that's what I get for talking with my mouth full," John muttered. He'd not been prepared for his lackluster table manners to literally come back to bite him. "It'll be fine in a second, my abilities will heal the wound."

"Here, let me help," Seras said cheerfully. John raised an eyebrow, a little confused as to what she could do to help a self-healing wound. She strode over and grabbed his jaw, taking a closer look at the wound. It wasn't large - it probably wouldn't have bled much at all if he hadn't caught his incisor tooth right on the center of the lip and punctured it. He'd have to watch his extra Strength score more carefully. He'd done it once before, after being numbed up at the dentist's office to have a cavity filled after one too many late nights and energy drinks. Of course he hadn't had Gamer's Body back then, so he'd had to deal with a bloody bite mark on his lip for days.

John cast aside his thoughts of his past mistakes just in time to notice Seras leaning in. Closer. Way too close. John's eyes met hers, and in those pools of azure, he saw flecks of red glistening just as she started to crack her lips open.

"Seras, stop!"

John put his hand on her collar abruptly, catching Seras mid-lean to halt her momentum. The crimson in her eyes flashed away instantly, and she took a few steps back, glancing around uncertainly.

"Oh, I-I'm sorry, Master! I don't know what came over me, I just thought after the other night-"

"Seras, it's fine," John muttered, wiping his lip furiously with the back of his palm. The stray droplets of blood that had lingered after the wound closed came away half-dried, and he rapidly wiped it away on his pants to avoid staining his shirt.

"No, I never do stuff like that, I don't know what happened. I just thought about before, an’... it seemed like a good idea."

"Blood, that's all it was. You're pretty sensitive to the stuff, it seems."

"Y-yeah, I guess so. Sorry I made you uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable?" John looked in amusement at Seras. "Seras, I stopped you because of the blood. Believe me, if I thought all you wanted was a kiss, I wouldn't have stopped you."

Seras flushed, glancing away shyly. John couldn't fight back the wicked smirk that came across his face. Seras was perhaps the first woman John had ever known shy enough that he could make her blush, and he was having a sadistic amount of fun abusing that.

"But, then why? You made me drink your blood before."

"It's… different," John said quietly. "Not bad, maybe, but different. You've never drank blood of your own free will. Maybe things don't work the same here, but if you drink blood of your own free will, you go full vampire. No coming back."

"What's the difference?"

"Honestly? I don't know. You get stronger, a lot. But as far as I know, there's no way to become human again even from where you're at, so if you had any interest in that, I'll let you down easy now. Even then, though, you should know what you're doing. Your… the one who turned you," John corrected himself, refraining from referring to Seras' old master as such, "said that doing so would surrender the rest of your humanity. Even if there's no physical aspect, that's something for you to decide on your own. Like you said earlier, you don't even know what path you want to take in this world. I won't take any choice away from you."

"T-thank you, Master. Truly, that's… that's really thoughtful of ya!" Seras said, a strangely sad smile coming across her face.

"Sorry, Seras. I just keep adding to your list of worries, don't I?" John asked, returning the expression.

"It's alright. I'm just really glad you're 'ere to tell me all this stuff. Dunno what I'd do without ya."

"Yeah, I'm really glad you're here too, Seras. Oh…" John stared at the dried blood on the back of his hand that hadn't rubbed off on his jeans for a moment.

"Actually, I guess I should probably feed you too, it's been a couple days. Don't worry - I'll make it an order."

Seras nodded enthusiastically. As John lifted up the sandwich again, he couldn't help but make one last jab at the vampiress.

"I guess you'll probably want me to bite my lip again, huh?"

As Seras gave a soft grunt of surprise and pointedly looked away from John's face, he could only chuckle darkly. He didn't remember ever being this quick-witted before he got his powers; surely it was a result of his stats going up. Just one of the many things he owed Gaia for, he supposed.

"Oh, this is just too easy. Thank you, boosted Charisma!"